MODERN EDUCATION SYSTEM. THE PRO’S AND CON’S.

“Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.”– G. K. Chesterton

Education is the imparting and acquiring of knowledge through teaching and learning, especially at a school or similar institution. The earliest educational processes involved sharing information about gathering food and providing shelter; making weapons and other tools; learning language; and acquiring the values, behaviour, and religious rites or practices of a given culture. Before the invention of reading and writing, people lived in an environment in which they struggled to survive against natural forces, animals, and other humans. To survive, preliterate people developed skills that grew into cultural and educational patterns.

Education developed from the human struggle for survival and enlightenment. It may be formal or informal. Informal education refers to the general social process by which human beings acquire the knowledge and skills needed to function in their culture. Formal education refers to the process by which teachers instruct students in courses of study within institutions.

Talking of the modern day education, one feels proud; of saying yes I am an educated person. Formally or informally all of us are educated. Education is the equipping with knowledge. The overall development of mind, body and soul is the real education.

Carter G. Woodson once said “For me, education means to inspire people to live more abundantly, to learn to begin with life as they find it and make it better.”

THE PRO’S

Modern day education is aided with a variety of technology, computers, projectors, internet, and many more. Diverse knowledge is being spread among the people. Everything that can be simplified has been made simpler. Science has explored every aspect of life. There is much to learn and more to assimilate. Internet provides abysmal knowledge. There is no end to it. One can learn everything he wishes to. Every topic has developed into a subject.

New inventions and discoveries have revealed the unknown world to us more variedly. Once a new aspect is discovered, hundreds of heads start babbling over it, and you get a dogma from hearsay. Not only our planet but the whole universe has become accessible.

Now we have good and learned teachers to impart us with knowledge of what they know. Every one is a master in his field. We and our children are getting taught by professionals of their field. Presently our education is based on making us the best in our area of interest, to help us reach our goals more easily. More of the fact based knowledge is being grasped by us. What we learn helps us in our career and in our profession. Professionalism is deep-rooted in our society now and this education makes us so.

Skill-development and vocational education has added a new feather to the modern system of education. There is something to learn for everyone. Even an infant these days goes to a kindergarten. And a little grown, mentally and physically is promoted to a Montessori. Everything is being categorized, be it a primary, middle, a higher secondary or graduate school. We have temples of education known by a familiar word the “university”.

Whatsoever we are getting educated day by day and what’s good about is that it’s a never-ending process.

Rightly said by Aristotle, “Education is an ornament in prosperity and a refugee in adversity.” is what everybody feels now.

THE CON’S

Well, that was the positive side, but every story has two telling. Of all the virtue, our education system has developed into mere schooling now. New trends are being developed which are far more a baloney that boon.

Albert Einstein once said “Education is that which remains, if one has forgotten everything one learned in school.”

Firstly our education is confined to schools and colleges. It has become a process of spoon feeding. “Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon” were the words of E.M.Forster. We are being fed with facts and knowledge. Not art, not books, but life itself is the true basis of teaching and learning. Cramming of facts and dates, hi-fi mathematical formulas, theories and doctrines should be at college levels when one has chosen his area of interest. What will the history pay a doctor or a mathematician, or medical terms to a historian?

Secondly, an art can only be learned from a workshop of those who are earning their bread from it. Modern education has spread more ignorance than knowledge. Most of the women even don’t know, where, the fabric they are wearing, came from. The word “How” is missing in our world which causes ignorance.

“Education…has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.” says G. M. Trevelyan.

Thirdly all education is bad which is not self-education. Presently, children after school are sent to tuitions. This is a clear question mark on the ability of school teacher. Homework tutorials are mushrooming up in our society. Students are thought of like they can’t do anything on their own and so are sent even to do the homework. Our schoolings got a lot of loop-holes. They guide us through a well catered pathway which finally leads to professionalism. Homework is a waste of time, if it is to repeat class work done today or to be repeated as class work to be done tomorrow.

Our schooling does not leave us with time to get educated. Mark Twain once said that” I have never let my schooling interfere with my education”. Our child’s normal routine has become to wake up early, brush up their minds with light reading, go to school, then go to tuition and finally come home and do the homework.

Finally our education is producing machines out of pupil. They read books, they speak books and they do books. Discussing in class lead to complications, which remains as confusions for a life time if left untreated. Vladimir Nabokov, a U.S critic, poet and novelist says “Discussion in class, which means letting twenty young blockheads and two cocky neurotics discuss something that neither their teacher nor they know.”

So, it’s a matter of debate that our education system is fallacious or fair.